Beauty Marks - One woman's quest to celebrate cancer scars as a symbol of strength

If you’re a woman, there is a one in eight chance that at some point in your life you will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Also according to the American Cancer Society, more than 180,000 women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer last year in the United States, and more than 40,000 died from it.

Though these numbers add up to a breast cancer diagnosis in this country about once every three minutes and a death every 13, others paint a more hopeful picture: The five-year survival rate for breast cancer, if caught before it spreads, is now at an all-time high of 98 percent, and the 2.5 million who have recovered from the disease make up the largest group of cancer survivors in the nation.

But even now, more than two years after her mastectomy and months of chemotherapy, the scar on Devon Williams’ left breast is still not quite familiar to her, she says.

Despite breast cancer’s pervasive impact to society, such scars are an alien concept to most of us, men and women. On behalf of those who have battled breast cancer and the hundreds of thousands who soon will, Williams, a mother of two in her 40s who completed treatment last year at Huntington Hospital, is on a mission to celebrate them publicly as marks of strength, perseverance, femininity and beauty.

“There’s a sense with this disease that you will have lost something — that you don’t go back, that they take your breast or a part of your breast and you lose your femininity or womanhood in some way. That’s not the case,” explained Williams, a Pasadena native who operates a talent management firm and is married to television character actor John Bishop. “Not just for women who choose reconstruction, but also for women who don’t make that choice, there’s a coming back into the body.”

With the help of the Pasadena Arts Council’s Emerge Sponsorship Program, which offers 501(c)3 fiscal management to small arts groups and for individual artistic endeavors, Williams hopes to create a traveling exhibit depicting breast cancer survivors and their battle scars in a new light — not in a clinical fashion, like in a documentary, but as art for art’s sake. She plans to call the collection “One in Eight” — a reference to the number of American women who have the disease or will be battling it — and to employ eight photographers to each create eight portraits of survivors, portraits much like the one on the cover of this newspaper. She hopes to begin the project later this year.

The idea came to her during a follow-up appointment with Dr. Francesca Hoehne, the surgeon who had performed her mastectomy at Huntington. “She was lamenting the fact that we don’t see breast cancer scars in the media. One in eight women will have a scar, but we don’t see them in Hollywood, in love scenes, ever. She said it would be good for us to see them,” recalled Williams, who for her advocacy was invited to ride in the Vera Bradley Hope Garden Float with “Sex in the City” star and breast cancer survivor Cynthia Nixon at this year’s Rose Parade. “I was in a place where I just wanted to move forward. I didn’t want to be thinking about [cancer] anymore but, as happens to a lot of us, I was filled with a desire to make some meaning out of it, to contribute.”

Williams and a number of other women who received treatment at Huntington stay involved with the hospital and in touch with each other by participating in fundraisers and making themselves available to counsel women who face breast cancer surgery.

Michele Winfrey, a mortgage company executive, former dance teacher and mother of four who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and underwent surgery to remove it, supports Williams’ efforts.

“It’s almost like we were enlisted in a sorority, without our permission. This was not in our life plans, but now we’ve found a way to make the best of it,” said Winfrey, who was 44 when she discovered a lump in her breast.

Although her cancer was discovered at another hospital, the La Verne resident felt doctors were less than understanding and immediately sought treatment at Huntington’s Constance G. Zahorik Breast Center, where two registered nurses guide women who undergo serious surgery through the recovery process. “We literally hold a patient’s hand and always see them before surgery [and other treatments]. I assure them that women are very strong,” said R.N. Tina Ivie.

Along with nurse Nancy Cushing, Ivie coordinates a unique care framework that includes counseling and mentorship, nutritional advice and even cosmetology and hairdressing help to counter the body’s changes during chemotherapy — all of it free of charge, funded by contributions from the late Zahorik, a San Marino philanthropist who had battled breast cancer. Even years after treatment, Ivie and patients such as Williams and Winfrey still keep in touch.

In June, the Zahorik Breast Center, Hill Breast Center (a state of the art cancer detection facility associated with Huntington) and radiation treatment facilities will be brought together in a redesigned wing of the hospital.

No matter how much support a woman receives, surviving cancer is a truly life-changing experience, said Winfrey.

“Although I was a strong woman in the corporate world, I was really very weak. Appearance was so important to me.

Once I saw myself completely bald and how my skin looked, that nonsense of trying to look perfect and find the perfect suit became insignificant,” she said. “I live my life now as if this could be my last day. I know I was saved for a reason, whether to walk a profound path or just share my experiences with other women. Last year my younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, so maybe I was saved to help her through.”But for all the discussion of breast cancer in the media and support a woman may receive, the process of recovery is an immensely individual and private challenge — an experience that even people who want to be helpful must recognize belongs intimately to each woman, even after its end.

“I’m torn between getting the word out and wanting to protect that private space,” said Diana Day, a recent breast cancer survivor and mother of twin 5-year-old girls who teaches at Pasadena’s Westridge School for Girls, where she advises the student newspaper. She previously worked at USC’s Online Journalism Review and as a blogger for the Los Angeles Times’ Web site.

“When you’re pregnant, it’s almost like your body becomes public property. People who don’t know you don’t mind touching your belly in a grocery store. With breast cancer, people I didn’t know well asked me what type of surgery I had. Half of me feels this shouldn’t be taboo, but there’s a part of me that still feels private and protective,” explained Day, who was treated last year at Huntington.

Williams understands that her artistic ambition means bringing the most personal of images out into the open, something many women wouldn’t dream of signing up for, scar or no scar.

But for those willing to give strangers such a glimpse into their lives, Williams hopes her exhibit will help to change both breast cancer’s public face and its private terror.

“Had I seen something like this when I was facing surgery, it might have lightened that load of thinking I was never going to come back to myself again, to feeling like a woman,” she said.